In the manufacture of business forms it is common practice to print the business forms on a continuous basis in a suitable press and after such printing to continuously cross indent or perforate the business form at each end so that upon subsequent folding at such cross indent line a stack of business forms is conveyed to discharge. One common business form of such construction is the computer readout which consists of a stack of identical overlying forms which are separable, as desired, along one or all of the cross indent lines.
Insofar as the manufacture of these types of business forms the printing and cross indent equipment is a more or less straight line process with the folding machinery being the most critical insofar as a potential for production inefficiency. In application of such strip folding equipment utilized heretofor, the longitudinal overlying fold was often provided by directing the paper strip alternately to longitudinally spaced sets of spiral conveyors. Many arrangements of such prior strip folding equipment included a swinging or oscillating plate to alternately direct the strip to the spaced sets of spiral conveyors. By their very nature the swinging plate arrangements involved complicated machinery which was subject to wear, required adjustments, offered a frictional resistance to the smooth flow of strip, and presented a problem to be overcome when it was desired to speed up production. Still other arrangements of prior strip folding equipment have been developed which do not utilize the swinging plate arrangement; however, these alternative arrangements do not alleviate or cure other problem areas possessed by prior strip folding equipment.
In particular both the swinging plate and alternative strip folding equipment utilized heretofor have included a number of problem areas such as: the number of adjustments which were required to be made when it was desired to increase or decrease the length of strip between overlapping forms; potential frictional resistance to the strip travel at the entry to the spiral conveyors as well as during the conveying of the strip downwardly which could result in inefficient strip handling and/or smearing of the printed indecia on the strip; providing consistency accurate guiding during the critical point of the entry of the strip to the spiral conveyors; and insuring an efficient means of discharge of the stacked strip after exit from the spiral conveyors.